Lawful Interception, see ISBN 978-1-4668-5384-3

This is my first experience with an audiobook (I've generally been avoiding obtaining them, but this was part of a bundle), so I'm not sure how much the narrator affected my thoughts on his short story.

It's pretty short, and I'll state right out that I have absolutely no clue as to what the preceding books were about. I like to think that this is a good test of whether a short story can stand on its own. Going by this one, I'd say it is, because it doesn't really rely on what's happened before, although there are a couple of clues; just enough to help build their characters. Which isn't to say there's a lot of it.

Marcus and Ange are pretty shallow as characters go. It's partially due to the length of the story, but I prefer to think that it's because despite being protagonists, they aren't the subject of the story - they're the medium rather. I guess that's why the author gave Marcus the ability to make really great coffee? To give a little depth? Same with the parent connections, they felt like fillers.

So what's the subject of the story? It felt like it was teenage angst and anti-establishment. This story was overly one-sided without first establishing a strong enough reason for it; thus the confrontation felt more like being for the sake of it - glorifying the reasons for it, and even looking up Wikipedia for “liquid democracy”. Perhaps I'm from a totally different culture or the wrong age group, but that's my impression of it.

The meat of it is about outsmarting police crowd control measures with technology, hackers, and even throwing in mentions of open source software. It's a geeky fantasy, and on some levels, I enjoyed that, but it felt a tad too much, even if this is supposed to be some sort of slightly futuristic society - it's pretty modern-day mostly, futuristic only when convenient to be. I'm not very sure, but I thought I heard the narrator refer to jailbroken Android phones... :/ But anyway, that ending scene was extremely cringe-worthy. Or maybe I'm just old. I can't imagine any woman (or teenage girl) finding that even remotely romantic. It sort of ties in with my thoughts about the story glorifying and beautifying acts of dissension (whether it's justified or not is not my point).